Re: Saving endangered langs (was Re: Extrapolating languages)

Dirk Elzinga scripsit:

> >I don't see, however, that there are any ethical strictures against
> >documenting a language even if the community (or the larger part of
> >it) is willing to let the language go extinct.
>
> I have heard more than once that what I was
> doing was "stealing" the language; my access to it was not perceived as
> legitimate because I was not a member of the community. In cases like
> that one still needs to respect the wishes of the community and desist,
> even if the work isn't "active anti-language-death" work. To gain the
> long-term trust and cooperation of a community, these things need to be
> taken into account.
This would be a tactical rather than an ethical stricture (though none the
worse for that).

ObEtymology:  Ruminating over "tact" and "tactics" led me to realize how
interestingly convergent they have become, descending from the same PIE
root *tag- through different branches (Latin tangere, tactus 'touch(ed)';
Greek taktikh 'deployment < arrangement'.

--
"In my last lifetime,                           John Cowan
I believed in reincarnation;                    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
in this lifetime,                               jcowan@reutershealth.com
I don't."  --Thiagi                             http://www.reutershealth.com